Now here
comes a truly great one for a change! Terry Gilliam's alternate vision
of the 1980's based on George Orwell's novel '1984' is both amusing and
frightening with people living in an over-organized society, swamped by
bureaucracy and completely bare of individuality. Sam Lowry, excellently
portrayed by Jonathan Pryce, works for the bureaucratic system but
secretly has dreams every night of a life as an individual and the love
to a mysterious woman. He sees his life as a hollow farce until one day
a small typo occurs that leads to the wrongful arrest of Harry Buttle
instead of the illegal freelance heating engineer Harry Tuttle. As Sam
starts investigations of the case, he runs into the woman from his
dreams and into really big trouble when the officials bring him in
connection with terrorism. What seems like a completely abstract vision
is actually a frightening look at our society with social critic
symbolism, satire and grotesque situations. From old woman being
obsessed with plastic surgery over the whole terrorism sub-plot to the
crippled social system and lack of care for the demands of individuals:
the film gives so many reasons to think critically about the way our
society develops that you can fill endless pages about it. I don't have
enough room here to do this masterpiece justice, so I will just move on
to the score.

The score:

With Brazil, Michael Kamen had
one of his earliest and most rewarding scoring assignments that he would
later refer to as his 'most completely satisfying participation in
film'. You can definitely hear in the music that Kamen was in love with
the film from the very first moment. Even though a major part of his
contribution consists of re-arrangements of Ary Barroso's schmaltzy song
"Brazil" serving as the score's main theme, the original underscore also
marks the strongest development of Kamen's own orchestral voice up to
that assignment. In retrospective, Brazil even feels like a light
version of his adventurous music for Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves
(1991) but the score is much more than that. Sadly, when it comes to the
usage of the score in the film, it notably suffers from adverse
conditions. The post production history of the film itself was troubled
and studio executives wanted a more light-hearted Hollywood picture with
a candy-ending, so Michael Kamen was trapped somewhere in-between
Gilliam's tough mallet version and studio head Sid Sheinberg's
'Love-conquers-all' Hollywood version. As always under such
circumstances, his score ended up quite butchered in the film.
Nevertheless, the integration of the song turns out to be an incredibly
effective move and by the end of the film, when Sam is left alone with
his dreams, humming the tune, it is really heartbreaking.

The opening cue first starts with the
rather odd "Central Services / (...)" commercial jingle source but
continues into "(...) / The Office" with an interesting interpretation
of Barroso's song where its rhythm is performed on low played saxophone,
wood blocks as well as sounds of typewriters and cash registers with
some of Kamen's symphonic music shimmering underneath. This is truly the
most unconventional and creative musical entry into a film ever. The
album continues with "Sam Lowry's 1st Dream / Brazil", namely the song
itself performed by Kate Bush and arranged by Michael Kamen. In the film
however, you will only hear Michael Kamen's orchestral arrangement from
that track without any vocals. "Ducts" is another odd source cue for a
central services commercial while "Waiting For Daddy / (...)" brings a
moaning saxophone solo and depression to the score. The second,
symphonic half of the cue for "(...) / Sam Lowry's Wetter Dream" starts
soaring with a statement of the song's melody on lush strings as Lowry
flies through his dream world until the dream becomes menacing and the
melody is being tortured around ingeniously. Big action music comes with "Truck
Drive" which carries Kamen's trademark way of writing for strings and
the brass receives a pretty intense, almost overly dramatic workout as
well. Too bad this is such a short cue.

The jazzy source music for "The
Restaurant (You've Got To Say The Number)" is not even half as
impressive as the previous track but still a nice lounge jazz
arrangement with a fine clarinet performance. Another excerpt from
central services' TV program is an interview with "Mr. Helpman" which is
accompanied by some overly noble strings as Helpman talks his
propagandistic lines. Dreamy solo flute opens "The Elevator" with the Brazil
melody before a delicate waltz version of the tune follows which rises
to an odd brass collapse. The underscore continues directly into
"Jill Brazil / (...)" and gives us a beautiful orchestral rendition of
the song's tune for lush strings and delicate horns while "(...) / Power
Station" starts out suspenseful and goes into an almost gothic rendition
of the song of epic proportions. Michael Kamen gives this fluffy tune so
many different dramatic meanings in this one cue only which is really
representative for his unlimited musical range. A conversation between
Sam and his mother in "The Party (Part 1) / Plastic Surgery" is
accompanied by some light, yuppie source music. "Ducting Dream" brings
an over-the-top orchestral rendition of the Brazil-tune with synthesizer
sounds shimmering through the brutal orchestral force. At the end of the
cue, Kamen also makes effective usage of his low-strings suspense music
as heard in Die Hard (1988).

After a light-hearted version of the
song, the underscore continues with "Days & Nights In Kyoto - The Party
(Part 2)" which suffers from some oddly muted vocals. "The Morning
After" brings a lonely mood for harps and gentle strings with a calm
Wagnerian sound starting to sneak in. This leads directly into the first
full statement of the Wagnerian fanfare for guerrilla plumber Harry
Tuttle in "Escape?". You can almost hear Kamen singing Har-ry TUT-TLE as
the self-confident 4-note fanfare explodes, which is how he came up with
the tune (although I always keep singing Mi-chael KA-MEN instead). Now
comes the crown-jewel of this score in the form of "The Battle" - a full
four minutes outburst of pure Kamen adventure music that would later
dominate his music for Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves (1991) with
driving cellos and noble brass fanfares, most notably the Harry Tuttle
fanfare. A lot of trademarks of Kamen's strong adventure voice all
appear here in full glory like fanfares that rise to a delicate note and
collapse. The adventure music continues into "Harry Tuttle - A Man
Consumed By Paper Work" with more variations on Tuttle's fanfare and the
song's tune also makes a menacing appearance on tuba before strings and
brass rises full of tension for Tuttle's paper intensive finish.
"Mothers Funeral / Forces Of Darkness" is a cue full of percussive power
and dark choral chants with a short snare drum line reminiscent of
Kamen's Die Hard (1988) militaristic tones. As things seemingly
turn out well for Sam and his girl, Kamen ends his score with a generous
big ending which surprisingly descends into a mourning violin solo for
the tragic ending while the album is brought to end by a Samba version
of the song.

RATING:

Score as
heard in the film:
87%

Score as
heard on CD:79%

TOTAL:
83%

The presentation:

If I can't stand one thing on a
Soundtrack album, it has to be dialogue. Why on earth would anyone at
Milan Records think about these voice-overs as a contribution to the
music is beyond me. Especially the album's first half is polluted with
this stuff. The central services introduction is kind of excusable since
it is technically a source music song from Kamen but complete dialogue
excerpts such as in "Ducts", "Mr. Helpman" or "The Party (Part 1)" are
really completely useless on CD. Thankfully, most of the more important
cues with Kamen's underscore were spared. Another issue is the sound
quality with its often odd anomalies. The recording isn't very detailed
and whenever there is more going on in the orchestra, the sound seems to
flutter a little. The vocals of "Days & Nights In Kyoto" are strangely
muted with some barely audible dialogue snippets thrown in. The booklet
looks rather Spartan though the absence of film artwork in the booklet
in favour of extensive liner notes is welcomed. There have been better
presentations of Kamen's music and especially the weak album for such an
important score in his career is a big disappointment.

Presentation by
the Label:29%

Summary:

The many film music gems that Michael
Kamen pulled out of his hat early in his career are amazing and
Brazil makes no exception. Kamen took Barroso's song Brazil
and translated it into his underscore seemingly without much trouble and
provided the fluffy earwig with an incredible dramatic depth that works
so great an enhances the picture so well (especially the ending). It is
only because of the composers outstanding underscore that Sam Lowry's
dream sequences and his desire to be an individual are so incredibly
involving. By the end of the score, when Kamen unleashed his adventurous
force and Lowry starts his great escape, you can't help but get excited
at these earliest outings of Kamen-adventure that already sounded
incredibly matured. The composer referred to this score as his 'most
completely satisfying participation in film' and certainly not without
reason because this is excellent music for an excellent film. Only the
album presentation leaves much to be desired but that should not stop
you from getting this fine score.